April 28, 2013

SJB announced that our Lincoln is Steven Hauck. I’m as ignorant of him as I am of nearly every other New York actor, but IMDB suggests he looks the part. I shouldn’t be watching Smash on the TV. I know enough to know it’s partially accurate, though I’ve not met the real crazies in the New York theater. Except for one savagely dishonest reviewer, everyone I’ve encountered so far has been, at the least, sane and humane. The attentive viewer will note that Bombshell must be a terrible, terrible show splendidly performed. And THAT is the diagnosis of Broadway theater at this point in time: impeccable staging and technique, deadly fear of material good enough to stand up to that technique, plus an abyssal terror of new work. Professionalism in every arena except the actual creation of the play, which–I take it back–may be professional enough without being very good. The “edgy” work on Smash is exactly the same as Bombshell, except the lights are dimmer and the dancers dance the same dances in a moody twilight and worse costumes.

16th and Curtis is in rehearsal. They also told me the names of their actors, which  I’m happy to have, however little they mean to me at this point.

The sickness seems to have been some kind of flu. Was weak and achy yesterday, and slept most of the day when I wasn’t rehearsing or devouring a LAB repast after rehearsal. Rose very late today. I could see the walls and floor without turning on a light.

I’ve served under choral conductors almost continually since the 7th grade. I think they must have summer camps where they go to learn conductor-y things, for obsessions and techniques seem to go in waves. Somewhere, also, they learn not to tell the chorus what they actually want, but to make them do some trick or exercise that will lead them to what the conductor wants without their ever having to know what it was. Choral singing s not a very participatory art, at least on the cognitive levels. It’s all between the director and the composer. We are the instrument. We’re not expected to understand how we’re being used. I must not have minded too much, as I’ve been doing it forever.

Blessed long rain on my garden. The first white peony is in bloom, a sloppy snowball, country girl carelessly brought up, yet perfect in beauty.. I long for the poor dicentria to be in the ground, soaking up this rain with her sisters.